Tag Archives: slavery

When Historical Fiction Becomes Allegory: Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

Late Last Night Books

The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora, a young slave, who escapes a Georgia plantation hoping to hop a ride to freedom on the Underground Railroad. What she discovers is that freedom’s journey has many obstacles. At the end of the story, after suffering psychological and physical harm along the way, we find her continuing her flight still hoping to reach freedom’s promised land.

This novel is an allegory of sorts. It begins offering a harsh portrait of life under slavery; but when Cora leaves the plantation, she moves into an imagined world, still harsh, meant it seems to teach the reader about the dangers of placing one’s hopes on whites.

Cora is transported north, as the title implies, on the Underground Railroad.

Ben Winters’ Underground Airlines: An Alternative History of Slavery and Freedom

Late Last Night Books

Ben Winters wrote Underground Airlines (Mullholland Books, 2016) ostensibly to bring attention to the lingering pernicious affects of slavery, but his inventive story can also be read to show far we have come from the days when slavery was legal.

In Underground Airlines, an escaped slave––whose true name we never learn––has been coerced into serving as a slave catcher for the U.S. Marshall’s Service. Slavery persists as the result of a 19th century constitutional compromise that allowed each state sovereignty over the issue. In the time of the story slavery remains in four states—a situation that has engenered extremely negative consequences for the rest of the country, undermining its economic and moral status and creating an environment where life in the north for blacks is barely better than it is in the South.